Business Improvement Districts

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As part of the wider Imagining Urban Futures research programme, Ian Cook (Northumbria University) and Kevin Ward (University of Manchester) have explored the mobilisation of the Business Improvement District ‘model’.

BID Street Wardens in Newcastle upon Tyne

Funded by the Leverhulme Trust and the Economic and Social Research Council, they have examined how BIDs – a policy that first emerged on a suburban high street of Toronto in the 1960s – has expanded into new contexts. It focuses on a range of places at different scales where BIDs have emerged including the UK (Ward and Cook, 2017), the English cities of Coventry, Plymouth and Reading in the UK (Cook, 2009, 2010) and Milwaukee/Wisconsin in the USA (Ward, 2007, 2010). It has also examined places where the BIDs model has received hostility such as in Sweden (Cook and Ward, 2012).

The research has also explored the role of the media, government and professional bodies (e.g. the Association of Town Centre Management, International Downtown Association), governments and the media in shaping and circulating knowledge about BIDs. Likewise, it has looked at the ways in which people learn about BIDs elsewhere such as attending conferences and study tours (Ward, 2006; Cook, 2008, Cook and Ward, 2012). Finally, the research has also explored the local security operations they engage in (Cook, 2010), and the role of the private sector in BIDs and the motivations behind their involvement/non-involvement (Cook, 2009).

Ward, K. (2011) Policies in motion and in place: The case of the Business Improvement Districts. In McCann, E. and Ward, K. (eds.) Mobile Urbanism: Cities and policy-making in a global age. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 71-96.

Ward, K. (2006) ‘Policies in motion’, urban management and state restructuring: The trans-local expansion of Business Improvement Districts. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 30 (1): 54-75. [pdf]